Consumers have been putting lights on both live and artificial trees for generations. Over time, artificial trees have become increasingly popular for both convenience and safety reasons. Initially, consumers draped their trees in traditional, stand-alone light strings, making electrical connections between multiple sets of light strings, often creating a web of interconnected wires and lights. Eventually, manufacturers of artificial trees began offering artificial trees with light strings already clipped to the branches of the trees. While such “pre-lit” or lighted trees provide improvements over prior, non-lighted artificial trees, a consumer still generally must first assemble their artificial tree, then plug the various attached light strings together such that all lights receive power.
Further, as lighted trees become larger and more popular, more and more light strings are added to such pre-lit trees. The increased number of light strings, lights, and wiring adds weight to the tree, increases complexity of electrical connection, increases costs to consumers and manufactures, and often results in unsightly groupings of power plugs and wires. Such side effects of increasing the number of lights on an artificial tree significantly detract from the improved aesthetics resulting from the increased light density of the tree.